Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Mapping Meteors, Asteroids & Exoplanets

Meteor Showers is a WebGL map of major meteor showers which can be seen from Earth. The map allows you to select and view from a number of different meteor showers which can be observed at different times of the year. These showers originate from multiple comets and asteroids.

You can select to view all of the meteor showers at once on the map or select to view an individual meteor shower from a drop-down menu. The menu includes the times of the year when each meteor shower is visible from Earth.

From the same developer the Asterank 3d Asteroid Orbit Space Simulation is an impressive WebGL application that shows a view of our solar system with over 600,000 asteroids mapped. It is possible to rotate, zoom and pan the simulation. It is also possible to refine the asteroids shown by most valuable and most accessible (just in case you have any asteroid mining plans).

The Exoplanets Viewer is another WebGL visualization (with a little help from Unity). This map of the Universe shows the location of all the exoplanets discovered so far. The Exoplanets Viewer shows the position of all the known exoplanets as seen from your current location and time.

The color of a planet on the map represents its temperature. The green exoplanets are those situated in the habitable zone. The hottest planets are colored red while ice worlds are colored blue.